Saturday, December 8, 2007

Fairy Tail

Mangaka: Hiro Mashima

Fairy Tail is a new shounen manga series being written by Hiro Mashima after he finally ended his popular Jump manga “RAVE” in 2005. It is set in a steampunkish world of adventure, magic, mages and guilds, where mages are the main adventurers in this series.

These mages are often members of Mage Guilds which provides access to information and quests but there is one particularly infamous Mage Guild that is a thorn in the side of the Mage Council because of the trouble that its members create - the Mage Guild called “Fairy Tail”

The story starts off with a young girl called Lucy who arrives in the town of Harujon who wants to be a proper mage and join Fairy Tail. While in Harujon, Lucy meets a boy called Natsu who has a serious case of motion sickness and a cat named Happy. Together, they unravel the mystery of the charismatic travelling mage who claims that he is the famous Salamander from Fairy Tail.

So far this story has been a pretty engrossing read and Hiro Mashima brings a new twist to the weak mages of the typical fantasy stories. Here in the world of Fairy Tail, the mages are the ones who fight villains and go on crazy adventures.

I would say that the characterisation and emotional style resembles that of One Piece while the world and fighting system resembles that of HunterxHunter, although I’d say that it is not as complicated and indepth as HxH. So if you like the usual shounen adventure and fighting fare, you can give Fairy Tail a try because it is pretty decent stuff.